Let’s talk about unions! Despite their vulnerability to venality, I think we have to acknowledge that unions are one of the exceptionally few forces the American worker has acting in their favor in this hardscrabble economy, for example—

Oh wait, we’re not talking about those unions. We’re talking about the ones where you get married on a beach to a woman who you've been deceived into believing is your long-lost childhood crush (and at this point, she appears to have started believing the hype), or where you coldblooded X-out a mean business lady/ancient lich of timeless evil who’s menacing your beautiful baby boykin, or where you visit the unmarked grave of your dead sister who was kidnapped and addicted to heroin and is definitely for real dead now, okay Aiden? Can we like go home already? Because I am not spending the night in Jersey-FUCKING-City, I don’t care if they finally got a Barcade!

With treachery in the air and the stakes soaring ever higher in this already fraught world of beachfront marriages and waterside casino development, Nolan exhibits a seriously déclassé attitude by outdressing everyone at Jamanda's wedding, Danny relives his college days by taking a surreptitious nap during Helen Crowley’s Capitalist Imperialism & Forbidden Blood Magicks 101 seminar, Conrad discovers viagra’s got nothing on the veritable priapism induced by some all-natural wheeling and dealing, Anders sits alone on a boat wondering what Starbuck is doing and why she’s so great (aren’t we all?), Victoria recoups her losses from Ashley’s ongoing Game of Burns by delivering a severe dose of lead poisoning, Padma keeps being whatever, and Aiden makes some of his squintiest faces we’ve ever been privileged to as he demands you RUN THE PROGRAM RUN THE PROGRAM RUN THE PROGRAM. All this and more on this thrilling (comparatively! considering it’s set right in the middle of bland-ass Season 2!) episode of Revenge!

-Dave

The movie I was trying to think of was Blow Up (1966), but I also completely mooshed the plot together with Peeping Tom (1960). Blow Up as we all know from film school is by Antonioni and is a dialogue with and rejection of (neo)realism and the notion that a filmed image is an unmediated representation of empirical reality. Thanks to his sister's horrifying death Aiden is getting an education in viz studies! Next hes gonna be all like GUYS do you even KNOW about the panopticon?

TRIMPS!

-Graz

Topics for Consideration:

#OniConrad
Nolan is the janus figure/ sexual mercurial angel of sexuality -
Amanda "Oops-Upside-Your-Head" Clarke
Vincent Denofrio-Vaughn
THE SCULLY BOX
The Titular Blank Check
Baby Carl’s Adventures with Aunty Chorcolate and the Elf: The Time I Got Rubbed On Some Cow Udders: A Tale of How I Contracted Mumps.
Our upcoming Hamptons Research Project, testing the plushness of the terrycloth robes and getting arrested for trespassing--please look forward to it!

What light in yon window breaks? Why, it's another Revengecast! That's right, it's your boy Dave here to tell you that I edited this episode specifically so Graz couldn't take out all my gross baby voices and/or references to weird breastfeeding subplots in manga (also she's been busy with work and stuff)! After forty-five minutes where we're distracted by Shia Lebouf, The Stallion that Mounts the World, Cat's Paws, and General Vampire Lore, we finally make it to the first commercial break, before which Helen Crowley, aka Lady InitiativeHeart, offers Aiden an ultimatum: kill Victoria Grayson in the next 24 hours or your definitely (possibly, probably, maybe) alive sister will die! What a moral conundrum, gasp!! With such intrigue boasted on the horizon, it's difficult to really sink yourselves into the Nolan and Padma house hunting subplot until you realize they are actually are experiencing the twin joys of house hunting and traitorism. Why you gonna play a Nolan like that, Padma? He never did nothin' to no one. Except Marco. And as we've already discussed, Marco is ANNOYING and therefore DOES NOT COUNT. Chocolate makes a big decision without considering the ramifications for even a single second and Jack and Declan keep existing; it's a good thing the water's out at the Stowaway AGAIN because that means they couldn't wash the boot black and chimney soot smudging their faces, which does them the huge favor of constant, overwhelming pathos when it comes time to sway Creepy Toothy Handsome Man's conscience to their side and, in a gradually becoming characteristic display of Human Emotion, he sells them back the bar so it can continue drowning them in debt like a big, rotting, baby-filled albatross around their scrawny, wiry, chimney-cleaning orphan necks! (luckily, Anders was distracted by a pick-up game of Pyramid at the time and could not stop the deal from going through)

Meanwhile, back on the other side of the country, Revenge sets most of the episode in Los Angeles because, I guess, they wanted to give their CG artists a break from Photoshopping out all that LA scenery that's in all their location shots anyway. Victoria wants Prosser (who??) to buy the Stoneheart Group, Prosser wants Victoria for the sex-wanting-having-makings, Danny wants the Stoneheart Group BECAUSE, Emily wants him to get it ALSO BECAUSE, and Aiden just wants to put a bullet in the back of Victoria's dome but these damn gauzy, all-but see-through, essentially transparent, curtains keep getting in the way and he didn't finish the Golgo 13 tape he rented so he never got to the part where you learn if someone actually can make that shot (if that someone is Aiden, apparently no). If my sister is dies, Emily, I swear to christ, I'm gonna stop forwarding you Vines of this adorable sheeb dancing to 80s pump-up songs.